There’s a great interview with Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia on Letterman: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4skH27r5dLc

At some point Dave asks them why they let people tape their shows, and Bob replies with “if we ever make a good album people would probably go out and buy it anyway”

They were open source before it was cool. Also check out https://relisten.net/ for a great index of their shows from the Internet Archive.